I was more than eight weeks making this trip, carrying with me all necessary baggage on my capacious, cowgirl saddle with its long and numerous buckskin tie-strings. At first I shrank very much from riding up to a cabin—a young woman, alone, with garments and outfit that must challenge the attention and curiosity of these people—in the dusk of evening or in a heavy rain-storm, and asking in set terms for lodging. But it took only a few days for me to find that here I was never to be stared at, wondered at, nor questioned; and that, proffering my request under such conditions, I was met by instant hospitality, and a grave, uninquiring courtesy unsurpassed and not always equalled in the best society, and I seemed to evoke a swift tenderness that was almost compassion.

During this journey I became acquainted with some features of mountain life which I might never have known otherwise. My best friends in the mountains in the neighbourhood of my own home had always been a little shy of discussing moonshine whiskey and moonshiners; but here I earned a dividend upon my misfortunes, being more than once taken for a revenue spy; and in the apologetic amenities of those who had misjudged me, which followed my explanations and proofs of innocence, I have been shown in a spirit of atonement, illicit still and “hideout.” I have heard old Jephthah Turrentine make his protest against the government’s attitude toward the mountain man and his “blockaded still.” I have foregathered with the revenuers in the settlements at the foot of the circling purple ranges, and been shown the specially made axes and hooks they carry with them for breaking up and destroying the simple appurtenances of the illicit manufacture. Knowing that Blatch Turrentine’s still must have cost him three hundred dollars, I cannot wonder that a mountain man, a thrifty fellow like Blatch, should have lingered, even in great danger, over the project of carrying it with him.

These dwellers in the southern mountain region, the purest American strain left to us, hold the interest and appeal of a changing, vanishing type. The tide of enlightenment and commercial prosperity must presently sweep in and absorb them. And so I might hope that a faithful picture of the life and manners I have sought to represent in Judith of the Cumberlands would be the better worth while.

A. Mac G.

Contents

CHAPTERPAGE
I.Spring [1]
II.At “The Edge” [20]
III.Suitors [47]
IV.Building [64]
V.The Red Rose and the Briar [83]
VI.The Play-Party [99]
VII.Kisses [112]
VIII.On the Doorstone [124]
IX.Foeman’s Bluff [135]
X.A Spy [152]
XI.The Warning [161]
XII.In the Lion’s Den [181]
XIII.In the Night [199]
XIV.The Raid [207]
XV.Council of War [221]
XVI.A Message [235]
XVII.The Old Cherokee Trail [244]
XVIII.Bitter Parting [261]
XIX.Cast Out [273]
XX.A Conversion [282]
XXI.The Baptising [302]
XXII.Ebb-Tide [315]
XXIII.The Dumb Supper [326]
XXIV.A Case of Walking Typhoid [340]
XXV.A Perilous Passage [360]
XXVI.His Own Trap [371]
XXVII.Love’s Guerdon [382]
XXVIII.A Prophecy [393]

Judith of the Cumberlands